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Techmeme
February 7, 2024, 1:35 PM
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Top News

Wayne Ma / The Information:
Source: Apple is building prototypes of at least two iPhones that fold widthwise; the phones are in early development and not set for production in 2024 or 2025  —  Apple is building prototypes of at least two iPhones that fold widthwise like a clamshell, according to a person with direct knowledge of the situation.
Michael Nuñez / VentureBeat:
Apple partners with University of California researchers to release open-source AI model MGIE, which can edit images based on natural language instructions  —  Apple has released a new open-source AI model, called “MGIE,” that can edit images based on natural language instructions.
Carl Franzen / VentureBeat:
Microsoft updates Copilot with a redesigned look and new image creation and editing features, along with Deucalion, a new AI model for Copilot's Balanced mode  —  In a startling move, Microsoft today announced a redesigned look for its Copilot AI search and chatbot experience on the web …
Emilia David / The Verge:
OpenAI says DALL-E 3 will add watermarks to images with C2PA metadata but acknowledges the metadata can “easily be removed either accidentally or intentionally”  —  OpenAI's image generator DALL-E 3 will add watermarks to image metadata as more companies roll out support for standards …
Mike Isaac / New York Times:
Meta proposes standards to identify AI content that its industry peers could use, and plans to label AI images posted on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads
Chainalysis:
Ransomware payments in 2023 hit a record $1.1B, up from $567M in 2022 and $983M in 2021, after a major escalation of the frequency, scope, and volume of attacks  —  The Chainalysis 2024 Crypto Crime Report  —  Coming soon  —  In 2023, ransomware actors intensified their operations …
Charlie Sorrel / iFixit News:
Apple Vision Pro teardown: 50 Vision Pro pixels fit into a single iPhone 15 Pro pixel, the display is not technically 4K, has a ~100° field of view, and more  —  After the whirlwind of team activity that was our initial Vision Pro teardown, we've been digging much, much deeper into those dual displays …
Charles Pulliam-Moore / The Verge:
Disney begins emailing Disney+ subscribers about TOS changes that will make sharing accounts harder, days after sending out similar notices to Hulu subscribers  —  Today, Disney Plus began sending out emails informing subscribers about new changes to its terms of service that will …
Jane Zhang / Bloomberg:
Alibaba reports Q3 revenue up 5% YoY to ~$36.7B, net income down 69% YoY to ~$2B, Taobao and Tmall revenue up 2% YoY to ~$18B, and approves a $25B share buyback  —  - The move may appeal to some investors as growth plateaus  — Alibaba is grappling with market and internal uncertainty
Kate Knibbs / Wired:
An interview with Nebojša Vujinović Vujo, who runs 2,000+ AI-generated news sites, often hosted on popular, dormant domains, and claims to have human editors  —  Serbian DJ turned internet entrepreneur Nebojša Vujinović Vujo floods abandoned news sites with AI-generated articles.
Camilla Hodgson / Financial Times:
Uber reports Q4 revenue up 15% YoY to $9.9B, Gross Bookings up 22% YoY to $37.6B, a $1.9B net income, 150M MAUs, and first full-year operating profit of $1.1B  —  Rides, deliveries and ads increase as company celebrates ‘inflection point’  —  Uber has reported its first annual operating profit …
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google updates Google Maps for Android to overlay the weather and air quality index when browsing the map layer, a feature the iOS app has had for some time  —  Like the iOS app, Google Maps for Android now overlays the weather and AQI when you're browsing the map layer.
Rohan Goswami / CNBC:
Roblox reports Q4 revenue up 30% YoY to $749.9M, bookings up 25% YoY to a record $1.1B, DAUs up 22% YoY to 71.5M, and $2.8B in 2023 revenue; RBLX jumps 13%+  —  - Roblox reported results for the fiscal fourth quarter and full year that beat consensus estimates on the top and bottom lines.
Michael Nuñez / VentureBeat:
Smaug-72B, a Qwen-72B-based open-source LLM released by Abacus AI, tops the Hugging Face Open LLM leaderboard and outperforms GPT-3.5 on several benchmarks  —  A new open-source language model has claimed the throne of the best in the world, according to the latest rankings from Hugging Face …
Alexandre Rajbhandari / Bloomberg:
Paris-based payments company Worldline plans to lay off around 8% of its global workforce, or ~1,400 jobs, as it seeks to cut annual costs by €200M from 2025  —  - Company seeks to cut annual costs by €200 million from 2025  — Worldline employs about 18,000 staff in more than 40 countries
Kaitlyn Tiffany / The Atlantic:
Inside Zuzalu, a co-living experiment organized by Vitalik Buterin in Montenegro in 2023, as the techno-utopian “Network State” concept inspires more projects  —  Silicon Valley has always dreamed of building its own utopias.  Who's ready to move in?  —  I.

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UiPath:
UiPath Unveils 10 Innovations that Will Shape the Agentic Future  —  Orchestration engine, API workflows and agentic testing among key features of new UiPath Platform™ for agentic automation, launched at UiPath DevCon 2025
Zoho:
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From Mediagazer

Sara Fischer / Axios:
PBS and one of its local affiliates sue the Trump administration, saying his executive order to cut federal funding violated PBS' First Amendment rights

Max Tani / Semafor:
The California State Senate launches an inquiry into whether Paramount's proposed $15M settlement with Trump violated bribery and unfair competition laws

The Bookseller:
Boundless, which bought crowdfunding publisher Unbound in March, tells authors that royalties accrued before March won't be paid until Boundless is cash stable

More News

Earlier Picks

Nelson Wang / Unchained:
MicroStrategy bought 31,775 bitcoin in Q4 2023 for an average cost of $39,411, taking its total holdings to 190K bitcoin acquired for a total cost of $5.93B
Wall Street Journal:
Fox, ESPN, and WBD announce a new joint venture to launch a streaming sports service in the US in the fall of 2024; each entity will own a third of the JV
Jonathan Vanian / CNBC:
Snap reports Q4 revenue up 5% YoY to $1.36B, vs. $1.38B est., DAUs up 10% YoY to 414M, a net loss of $248M, up from $288M in Q4 2023; SNAP drops 30%+
Reuters:
The Netherlands says Chinese state-sponsored hackers broke into the Dutch Ministry of Defence's internal network in 2023, using a Fortinet vulnerability
Ron Miller / TechCrunch:
Apple releases a beta version of visionOS 1.1, which brings enterprise device management to the Vision Pro
AJ Vicens / CyberScoop:
Google's TAG publishes a report on commercial spyware, detailing ~40 vendors, and says global governments should take more aggressive steps to combat spyware
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